Last month, the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the 2010 version of its bi-annual Occupational Outlook Handbook. This information-packed compendium outlines the state of the U.S. labor market and draws on reams of data and expert opinion to project long-term (through 2018) growth prospects for about 300 distinct occupations. It examines likely growth and declines in the job prospects, how each job is likely to change, the types of education that will best prepare people for these jobs, how much these jobs typically pay, the degree of competition one may face in seeking a specific job and even how best to find and win these positions.

Not to oversell the value of this data, BLS issues all the necessary caveats. The most important are that it is examining long-term trends and that findings are subject to uncertainties inherent in any effort to anticipate, much less quantify the future. Most importantly, it recognizes that unanticipated shocks, such as a global Great Recession, the collapse in the value of a world currency, a major terrorist attack or the implications of an unprecedented environmental disaster could delay or totally derail any such projections. Who, for example could have predicted that when a freshman entered college during the boom years of the mid 2000’s, the world would be mired in the worst recession since the great depression and that newly minted graduates would face the highest unemployment rates since the Depression?

Despite the caveats and uncertainties, the Handbook contains reams of fascinating information which is necessary reading for anybody that is even thinking about working over the next decade. Not just students who are now entering school or graduates attempting to enter the workforce, but virtually anybody who might consider the prospect of changing jobs, or who might be laid off any time over the next decade.

The Lifetime Advantages of Education

Given the value of this information, my next few blogs will examine some of what I consider the most important trends for occupations that typically require a four-year college degree or higher. I am not even going to touch upon the voluminous sections that focus on jobs that typically require only high-school, or what the BLS considers “mixed” educations (those that require some education beyond high school, but less than a bachelor degree).

Why focus exclusively on occupations that typically require bachelor’s, and increasingly, graduate degrees? Chart 2 of the report explains this far more succinctly and poignantly than I ever could. As it shows, every additional level of educational attainment, from less than a high school diploma through professional degree, yields progressively higher, stair-step-like increases in average weekly earnings (from $419 per week to $1,441 in 2006 dollars), lifetime earnings and progressively lower prospects for unemployment. (One interesting anomaly is that those with doctoral degrees tend to earn slightly less money and have slightly higher unemployment rates than do those with professional degrees, albeit still significantly better than those with master’s degrees.)

Although the 2006 year benchmark for the BLS data portrays unemployment rates that appear almost ludicrously low in the current environment (6.8% for less than high school through about 1.5% for bachelor’s and above), the pattern holds—although the differences are just as dramatic, and much more depressing—in 2010. As shown in the BLS’s May 2010 unemployment ratings, these figures are now 15% and 4.7%).

Just as important as the job security and earnings potential attributable to higher levels of education, occupations that require a bachelor’s degree or higher have in the past— and will continue to enjoy—higher growth rates (15% compared with an average of 10%) than occupations with lower educational requirements. And most importantly to many, higher education levels are more likely to give one more flexibility in selecting (at least in normal economic times) the type of work they would like to do and result in more intellectually stimulating and psychically rewarding careers. This does not even begin to account for the non-job-related benefits of college, such as improved health, civic involvement and aesthetic appreciation.

So far, it sounds like a slam dunk. The more education, the better, more lucrative and secure the career. A number of people have gotten the message. According to a Census Bureau survey, the percentage of U.S. workers (defined for this purpose as employed people between 16 and 44 years of age) with college degrees has doubled over the last three decades and the percentage of high-school graduates who are enrolling in colleges and universities has reached an all time high of 70 percent.

The bad news is that this still represents less than 30% of workers (although another 22% has completed at least some level of college, including Associate degrees). In other words, half of all these working adults still have only 12 or fewer years of education at a time when many employment experts agree that all employees should have at least two years of post-high-school education.

Given the economic advantages of higher education, why would anyone not get a college, or even graduate degree?

I will briefly discuss this issue in my next blog (July11). I’ll then shift back to the college-level job data, drilling down into those bachelor-and-above-level occupations that offer the best employment opportunities, the highest earnings potential and the greatest opportunities for intellectual, and ideally psychic fulfillment.